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Hudson looked at him curiously. “You take a brisk jog down the coast or something?”
Dean placed his hands on his hips. “Or something.”
While they made small talk, I started for the house. I wanted to make sure she was all right. I needed to hear her voice. She had led us all back into camp the other night before disappearing into Colin’s house and she hadn’t resurfaced since. For all I knew, she had left.
For all any of us knew, Penny had chased her off.
“Raven!?” I called out as I approached the house.
I hopped up onto her porch and knocked rapidly on her door, but I sensed no movement. I sniffed the air, trying to latch onto her intoxicating scent that I hadn’t been able to shake from my mind. She had surrounded me all night, enticing me and drawing me nearer to her with every step she took.
But her scent didn’t smell as strong as it should have.
“Raven!” I exclaimed.
I touched the front door and closed my eyes, trying to draw its energy from within. I saw Brody slamming through it on multiple occasions. I caught glimpses of Colin while he was still alive marching through, his nostrils puffing out with anger. I pressed my cheek against it, allowing my tracking powers to blanket my conscious mind.
And with as many images as the door provided for me, none of them were of Raven from last night.
“She didn’t go home,” I whispered to myself.
I whipped around, my back hunched as my eyes darted around. I looked toward the ground and saw a faded set of smaller footprints that drew me off the porch. I bent down and brushed at them with my fingertips.
I pressed my palm to the ground and the vibrations of its life ricocheted up my arms. I leaned into it, absorbing its life force and its residual energies. My heart leapt into my throat. I struggled to breathe as my entire body began shaking. Waves of static electricity sizzled up my arms, contracting my muscles and dropping me closer to the ground. I’d never felt such intensity in all my life. It felt like something was weighing me into the earth, as if it were attempting to drag me under. Still, I curled my fingertips into the ground, siphoning the energy from it that didn’t originally belong. And as it overwhelmed me completely, causing my vision to go dark, a sense of urgency slapped me across the face.
Before a still-life image of Raven staring at her home dawned upon me.
“She never even made it to the damn porch,” I growled.
I stood to my feet as the wind wrapped around me. I allowed it to turn me, guiding me and pointing me in the direction that Raven had run. I took off, sprinting as quickly as I could across her front lawn before darting into the woods. And as my legs pumped, propelling me forward, I felt my teeth lengthening as my claws started to show themselves.
“Raven, where are you? I know you didn’t make it home.”
I heard her gasp as I kept myself from shifting completely. “Levi?:
I came to a screeching halt as the sound of fear in her voice held me hostage. “Just tell me where you are. I’m coming.”
“I-I-I—I’m in a field. I slept in a field. The house, it didn’t feel right. Why didn’t the house feel right, Levi?”
I sniffed the air deeply. “What does the field look like?”
“Can everyone hear us?”
The wind turned me to the west, and I took off in a dead sprint. “No. Not right now.”
“Then, how can you—"
“Just trust me, Raven. Describe the field.”
“Is it because of the moon? The full moon? Does the full moon affect us like that?”
The tears in her voice only stoked my anger. If she was hurt, or if a bear had gotten to her, they were as good as dead.
Raven’s voice sounded exhausted. “Please, tell me. I’m so tired of not knowing anything.”
I kept running, my legs pumping as quickly as they could go. I didn’t want to shift while I was still in the camp. I didn’t want to alert anyone to anything else foul while Raven was there. If she had any chance of becoming Alpha, then we couldn’t risk any other hiccups that further destroyed the trust the pack had in her.
But, once I pierced the edge of the woods, I braced myself. “The full moon is like a power surge to us. It’s not the reason why we shift, but it’s power and light fills us with an energy that the sun doesn’t give.”
